The pleasure that we experience when we get what we want is fleeting. Spiritual practice is meant to replace the pursuit of pleasure with an enduring happiness. This kind of happiness arises when we can be satisfied in any circumstances, that is, happy in this present moment whatever it is.
One important difficulty in achieving this comes from the fact that there is a kind of feeling which is really good at taking us out of the present moment. If we’re diligent, the fear of being negligent can overwhelm our present moment awareness. We are very sensitive to the view that it’s our duty to fix everything that went wrong in the past or to fix every problem in the future that hasn’t happened yet.
This is not a problem to take lightly. The success that we’ve had up to this point has been largely based on our ability to get things done. But what if we could streamline work so that we were only diligent with respect to things that matter and things that don’t matter we could just let them be?
A key challenge here is doubt about what’s important and what’s not important. But if we are really suffering then we have to admit that our way of viewing the world simply doesn’t work. If we can accept that then we can accept that we need to learn a better way. How do we gain confidence that this better way is actually going to make us happy?
The proof that this practice works is embedded in the practice itself. When you know what you’re doing this is both the answer to suffering and the proof. Through mindfulness we can bring the mind away from troubles of the past and the worries of the future. Not only that, if we can also observe how the mind is in the present moment we can see that there is a relaxed comfort that comes with that, showing us that it works.
The challenge comes in when you want to make this a habit. For that you need training and the best kind of training is training that you get from a meditation retreat. At a meditation retreat we learn to take one moment of present moment awareness, which everyone is capable of experiencing, and learn how to string it together to make a whole lifetime of happiness.